Brits Blast Iraqi 'Crimes'
The British government launched a propaganda assault on the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Monday, issuing a detailed dossier of alleged human rights abuses in Iraq.
The report came as United Nations weapons inspectors continued their search of suspected sites, visiting a Baghdad factory that made guidance and control systems for Iraq's "stretch Scuds," Soviet-made missiles that the Iraqis modified to longer range and used in the Gulf War.
Such long-range missiles — 400 miles — are now prohibited for Iraq, and the inspectors presumably want to ensure that work has not resumed.
Iraqi Information Ministry officials said a second team of inspectors visited an alcohol plant on Baghdad's outskirts. The purpose of the inspection could not be immediately determined. Alcohol is a component of many chemical weapons.
The weapons inspections are part of a crackdown on Iraq's alleged violation of United Nations resolutions, and were ordered by a Security Council resolution warning of "severe consequences" if the Iraqis do not cooperate. The searches occur under a threat by the United States and Britain to take action against Iraq — without further Security Council approval — if Iraq obstructs the inspections.
According to the 23-page British report Iraq is a "terrifying place to live" where "arbitrary arrests and killings are commonplace," and where rape and torture are used to intimidate and silence critics.
With sections such as an appendix on the cost of Saddam's actions to fellow Muslims, the report was clearly intended to make a case for possible military action against Iraq, which Britain has joined the United States in advocating.
"By disarming Iraq, we not only help those countries in the region which are subject to Iraqi threats and intimidation, we also deprive Saddam of his most powerful tools for keeping the Iraqi people living in fear and subjugation," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
But human rights group Amnesty International argues the West has known of Saddam's abuses for years, and is only publicizing them now, to justify its war plans, reports CBS News Correspondent Steve Holt.
"Let us not forget that these same governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International's reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq before the Gulf War," said the organization's secretary general Irene Khan.
Straw said the dossier was the most detailed the British government had compiled on Iraq and included intelligence material, firsthand accounts of Iraqi victims of torture and oppression and reports by private organizations.
Political dissidents are tortured, women lack basic human rights and are routinely raped by security personnel while in custody and political prisoners are kept in inhumane and degrading conditions, the report said.
It details Saddam's persecution of Iraq's ethnic Kurds and the Shia religious community and also provides a checklist of favored methods of torture, including eye gouging, electric shock and piercing hands with electric drills.
The Security Council resolution that sent the weapons inspectors back empowered them to go anywhere at any time to determine whether Iraq is still harboring banned weapons.
During an inspection Sunday, the U.N. experts showed up at a field 20 miles north of Baghdad on the fourth day of the renewed search for weapons of mass destruction.
That inspections regime collapsed in 1998 amid disputes over access to sites and Iraqi complaints that U.S. spies were among the U.N. inspectors. Those inspectors believed they were unable to find and destroy all of Iraq's illegal weapons.
Among the weapons systems still unaccounted for are the toxic-spraying Zubaidy devices believed once tested at the airfield visited Sunday. In 1998, inspectors said at least 12 of the devices were built but there was no record of any of them being destroyed.
After spending four-and-a-half hours at the site Sunday, the inspectors left without saying anything to reporters about the day's mission.
The U.N. resolution requires that Iraq give up all weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq must reveal the extent of its weapons capabilities to the United Nations by Dec. 8, and chief U.N. nuclear watchdog ElBaradei warned on Sunday that everything must be noted.
There also was a U.S.-British airstrike on southern Iraqi air defense facilities Sunday in response to Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, the U.S. military said. The airstrike on Iraqi air defense facilities followed Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, the military said.
State-run Iraqi radio, citing an unidentified military spokesman, reported four civilians were killed and 27 wounded in attacks on "civilian and service" installations in southern Iraq.